Touching the Fire: Buffalo Dancers, the Sky Bundle, and Other Tales [Paperback]

Roger L. Welsch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 1997

The Turtle Creek band of the fictional Nehawka Indians wages a battle for the return of their sacred Sky Bundle, a medicine pouch containing artifacts. It reposes under glass in an eastern museum at the beginning of Touching the Fire. Seven interlinked stories, beginning with a court battle in the year 2001 and going far back in time to the origin of the Bundle and the first Nehawka village on the Great Plains, reveal the richness and depth of Indian cultural heritage. Touching the Fire is multilayered—sad, humorous, and always informative.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Folklorist Welsch ( Omaha Tribal Myths and Trickster Tales ), an adopted member of the Omaha tribe, here relates the saga of the Turtle Creek band of the fictional Nehawkas and their most sacred object: the Sky Bundle, a medicine pouch containing powerful talismans. The interlinked stories appear in reverse chronological order, beginning in 2001, the year the Sky Bundle was returned to the Nehawkas from a Boston museum, and moving back to the tribe's origins somewhere in the mists of history. The hand of Coyote, the old trickster, can be seen at work in the narrative. The Nehawkas secure the funds to gain repatriation of the relic by threatening to build a living museum in the manner of colonial Williamsburg: a suburban tract house that Indians can visit to see how white people live. They secure the reburial of another sacred object by making so many exact replicas that no one can find the real one. The tale of the Sky Bundle's return recalls the real-life story of the Omahas' own Sacred Pole, and the chronicle of the Jefferson Peace Medal echoes struggles over a similar medallion given to the Cherokees. This gives Welsch's stories great universality; they speak of all Native Americans, not just of an individual tribe or a single holy artifact. Author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

Folklorist, widely published and broadcast essayist Welsch-- who was adopted into the Omaha Tribe in 1967--reveals much love and knowledge of Plains Indian people and their spiritual life, but skilled fiction writing still eludes him in his 16th book and second collection (It's Not the End of the Earth, But You Can See It from Here, 1990). The first of the seven linked stories takes place in the year 2001, when members of the invented Nehawka tribe outwit a racist museum director and retrieve their sacred Sky Bundle. The stories move backwards in time until the historic origin of the bundle, the symbolic objects it contains, and the sometimes otherworldly events they commemorate are all revealed. By the end, the logic-oriented reader is led to appreciate that cultural fragments strewn through the text may seem irrational taken out of context but, in fact, are meaningful and make sense. The opening pieces, concerned with contemporary political issues, are more problematic: characters rarely transcend stereotype, and affirmative endings seem forced-- as when a violent racist ex-drug-dealer turned bounty-hunter tracks down two young Indians who've jumped bail after an arrest for distributing sacramental peyote; exposure to their innate nobility and religious conviction transforms him; he helps them beat the rap, marries the young woman, and throws in his lot with the Nehawka. Welsch opens with a passionately partisan and moving essay about the religious persecution of Native American peoples; the stories themselves, while well-intentioned and offering interesting detail, remain heavy-handed and unconvincing. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Bison Books (September 28, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080329798X
• ISBN-13: 978-0803297982
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,049,301 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a fantastic (literally) book!, October 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Touching the Fire: Buffalo Dancers, the Sky Bundle, and Other Tales (Paperback)

I reviewed this book for a magazine when it first appeared. I gave it an all thumbs and fingers up review. I've reread it several times since then and it only gets better. Roger Welsch has written something that goes to the very heart of Native American religion, and done so in a way that is neither dismissive nor sappy. He is bang-up, dead-on, exactly right in his approach. I've used this book in some of the university classes I teach. Once the students understand that we're progressing backward through time, they have no problems. It's especially helpful in providing a background for discussing the whole repatriation of objects issue.

5.0 out of 5 stars Roger Welsch, an overlooked treasure., July 13, 2011

By 

Richard G. Prosapio "coyote" (middle-of-somewhere, the land of Oz! New Mexico) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Touching the Fire: Buffalo Dancers, the Sky Bundle, and Other Tales (Hardcover)

If you're under fifty you don't remember Roger and "Postcards from Nebraska", little five minute gems broadcast on Charles Kuralt's "CBS Sunday Morning". You missed some classics. Don't miss this fine story-teller by passing up this read. Although this book has been classed as a "fiction" piece, I will personally assure you, and yes, I've talked to Roger about this as well, none of these stories are fiction....you'll just have to suspend your credulity about that. Call them "magical reality" or even whimsey if you like, but read, enjoy, and ponder all the possibilities, Roger knows what he's talking about and he does it with straight forward, no-frills-midwestern honesty. Don't know what that is? It's writing without the pretense of "style". This is a read you will treasure and perhaps pass on to someone you love and with whom you would like to share some magic.